


Crisis on Infinite Rampions

by Zissa



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Additional Character/Relationship Tags to Be Added as Needed, All Characters Will Eventually Be Involved, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Friendship, Gen, InterUniverse Friendships, Lots of What Ifs But Very Little Plot, Some Canon-Typical Violence, TLC Meets the DC Universe, this is the dumbest thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:33:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zissa/pseuds/Zissa
Summary: "One moment, she and the others were sipping post-dinner coffee and chortling over the last batch of Thorne’s beautifully embellished tales from their travels, and the next, the world was seizing. Skipping and wavering like a badly coded holo-transmission. Cress’s head throbbed, her stomach roiled, and then it was over as quickly as it had begun. It was over and she was…here. Wherever here was."~A series of interconnected one-shots surrounding the chaos that comes with the characters of one universe stumbling into another.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	Crisis on Infinite Rampions

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, someone made me write a headcanon about what would happen if there was a TLC/DC crossover. Some time later, someone else asked me about writing that story into a full fic. And here we are!
> 
> In essence: Tumblr made me do it. Enjoy!

Cress had harbored daydreams like this once upon a time. Dreams where she would fall through the cracks of the universe to stumble into some other, _better_ world for a sweeping adventure or a grand romance or any of the other things that came with that sort of starlit fairy tale. Dreams spun out of all the old novels she’d sifted through in the empty hours aboard her satellite, where a step through just the right wardrobe or cracking the spine of a particular spellbook was enough to send an otherwise ordinary heroine off into a whole new world.

But Cress was not ordinary, she no longer lived for hollow fairy tales when she’d already lived the real thing, and she had no time for extracurricular adventures—sweeping or otherwise.

She had less than twelve hours before she and Thorne were due back on their scheduled flight path with a cargo hold full of letumosis antidote and a dozen drop-off locations before their next break. Or at least she had _had_ twelve hours when she’d been curled up in the homiest of Artemisia Palace’s many, many living spaces, her shoulder propped up against Thorne’s chest and the rest of her friends scattered across the various sofas and chairs that filled the room. One moment, she and the others were sipping post-dinner coffee and chortling over the last batch of Thorne’s beautifully embellished tales from their travels, and the next, the world was seizing. Skipping and wavering like a badly coded holo-transmission. Twisting and warping and turning inside out until the world was little more than a blur of blinding light and dizzying splotches of color. Cress’s head throbbed, her stomach roiled, and then it was over as quickly as it had begun. It was over and she was…here. Wherever here was.

She had reached blindly out for something to steady herself on, fully expecting to brush her fingertips against the soft cotton of Thorne’s shirt or the plush upholstery of a couch that cost more than the Rampion had. But when the fog across her vision had cleared and her hands met with cold metal paneling instead, it became clear that more than just her vision had shifted. A flurry of explanations cycled through her mind as she staggered to her feet in the center of a broad, curving hallway. Sedatives in the drinks by vengeful enemies left over from the war, invisible gas pumped into the palace by the same, a kidnapping aimed at the royals in the group’s midst—it could be anything. Perpetrated by anyone. But why would she have been left crumpled in an open corridor, alone and unguarded, if someone had gone to all that trouble to spirit her off to wherever she now stood?

It was a satellite. That much she was sure of. The familiar bite of recycled air in her lungs and the nostalgic tug of artificial gravity on her limbs were impossible to mistake. But it wasn’t like _her_ satellite—that much was immediately clear just from the breadth of the hallway Cress had blinked awake in, and she couldn’t help the sigh of relief that came with being free from that particular aspect of the bitter déjà vu welling up in her gut. At least if she was stuck back in space for the time being, she wasn’t going to be cramped.

Cress crept a few yards down the corridor to scout out her surroundings as well as she could without attracting any attention, but found herself frowning harder with each passing second. Everything about the satellite—or perhaps space station would be more accurate given the sheer volume of branching hallways and crew quarter doorways she ghosted past—felt wrong. The construction felt clunky and unfamiliar, from the stiff lines and raw metal that made up the hallways to the outdated keypads and sensors that barred the doors. Even Cress’s little satellite had felt more well-equipped.

She didn’t recognize the insignia stamped into every other wall panel, either. The interlocked J and L encircled by a broad shield was not Earthen or Lunar, nor could she match it to any of the individual nations that made up the Earthen Union. The more she saw, the less Cress felt like she understood. And that wasn’t a feeling Cress Darnel appreciated.

She pulled up short next to a viewport carved into the nearest bulkhead—until now, all she’d seen of this place was an unending maze of riveted steel. This was the first hint she’d seen of a world beyond the station even existing. She craned up on tiptoe, pressing a hand to the glass for balance as she peered out. The moon loomed large on the other side of the window, glowing like a beacon as the station’s orbit pulled them past it in a gentle rotation. She could spare a moment to watch it, to wait for the one piece of familiarity she could grab hold of as she scrambled to find her bearings. But the longer she watched, the less of a comfort the view became. The moon’s surface was much the same as when she’d last seen it—stark whites and grays and muddled shadows passing over a surface pocked with craters—but it stretched on further than it should have. Further and further and further until the last few doubts Cress had clung to were replaced with cold dread. Because while the moon remained…Luna was no more. No domes, no glittering silver lakes, no tracks snaking through the dust to indicate even the barest of human presences.

Nothing.

Cress sagged away from the window, stumbling a few steps back as she gasped. Wherever she had gone, whatever gap in the fabric of reality she had plummeted through, the world it had spat her out into wasn’t hers. Not by a longshot.

~

Once Cress knew her predicament, hiding away for the time being seemed like the safest option. She needed time. Time to gather intel, to observe the place she stuck in, and—most importantly—time to suss out a way home. As soon as she found an airduct with a large enough opening at a height she could reach, Cress scrambled into the shaft and pulled the grate closed behind her. For all the camera lenses and carefully secreted sensors she could spot dotted along the ceilings in every corridor, there was no shortage of ventilation shafts with enough breathing room for her to slither unseen from one section of the station to the next. Until she had a better idea of what she was dealing with, it would be the best place to lie low until she had a better plan of attack.

It took a few hours, but she eventually found an intersection of the ventilation and electrical systems with just enough wiggle room for her to patch her portscreen into the computer. The system was almost painfully primitive once she found a way to link herself into it. With what seemed like centuries of progress stripped away, navigating the weak security features and simplistic coding techniques of this place was easier than Cress would’ve expected for what was clearly meant to be a state-of-the-art facility. Her historical knowledge wasn’t exhaustive, by any means, but she knew enough to be sure that putting a base of this scale into orbit at all was a financial and technological marvel at this stage in the game. Or at least, it would’ve been in her world’s Second Era. But that was the trouble of it all…the more of this world’s internet that she scoured once she had access to it, the more evident it became that this was not where she belonged. There was no Luna, no Earthen Union, no Rampion…no Carswell Thornes.

No matter how many times she typed out those names or shuffled the search terms around, there was nothing. All that was familiar was ash in the wind, replaced by a satellite called the Watchtower. Which, evidently, was a base of operations for superhuman vigilantes. Cress sighed and ran the search for Thorne one more time. Just to be sure. Just…for comfort. And perhaps to put a little extra mental distance between herself and the search that turned up the fact that she had fallen into quite possibly the most difficult place to land when tumbling through the multiverse.

Superhumans. She’d fallen into the home of real, live superhumans. _Superheroes,_ if the media of this world was to be believed _…_ she knew there were comparisons to be made, given that her own world boasted wolf hybrids and Lunars with the power to warp minds, but there was still something different about this. About people who could skim through the clouds under their own power, who could heft metric tons without breaking a sweat, who could break sound barriers on foot and _physically_ shapeshift rather than just concealing their appearance behind a glamour. It was comic book fare. And, as desperately as Cress wanted to go home, she couldn’t help the frisson of excitement that notion sent up her spine. That had been a daydream once upon a time, too…Masks and capes and soaring off into the sunset in the wake of an epic battle—the net shows gave it all such an appealing glow of romance and adventure.

Somehow, no mention of scrunching into cold ventilation shafts for hours on end had never figured into that version of this sort of world. Cress sighed.

Once she’d finished wiping any traces of herself from the surveillance footage and covered her electronic tracks, there was less pressing work to be done. Poking through the internal workings of the station, from its floorplans and design schematics to its apparently rotating crew—not crew: _Justice League—_ complement. Rooting through the surveillance cams for a look at who was currently manning the station and what they were up to. And, most importantly, hunting for the fastest route off the station and towards Earth. Because while this Earth wasn’t home, it was certainly a lot more like it than the Watchtower was.

But for every move she made, she could feel another presence dogging her virtual footsteps. For each firewall she ghosted through and every security measure she circumvented, she could feel another layer of resistance scrambling to force her back out. Whoever sat on the other end of the connection was good. Very good, in fact, for someone of this era. But, Cress thought with only a little extra satisfaction as she flicked the final keys to lock the pesky presence temporarily out of the system and out of her way, she was better.

She would let them back in when she done—it was, after all, an unfamiliar space station, and who knew what sort of unpleasant fail-safes existed for long-term security risks? —but for now, the Watchtower was hers.

For such an enormous space, it felt cavernously empty. Through her view of the surveillance footage, Cress spotted a few figures drifting in and out of what seemed to be a galley, the apparent command center, and the room equipped with the transporter systems (that, if nothing else, piqued her attention) used to travel between here and Earth, but the total number of people present was low enough to be counted off on her fingers if she was so inclined. She was grateful for that. The fewer people there were aboard, the fewer people she had to evade until she found a way to borrow those transporters. Or, preferably, to hunt down a ship or shuttle or something she was actually familiar enough with to operate. Between Thorne and Scarlet, she’d picked up a few of the basics when it came to piloting. Probably ( _hopefully_ ) enough to get herself safely to the ground.

Only a few people even strayed near her perch among the wiring and the insulation as she searched. And the ones who did seemed to dismiss any suspicious thumps or muffled movement as just the sounds of the behemoth station settling under the pressure of space.

All except the man masquerading as a bat.

He was becoming a problem.

She’d caught her first glimpse of him storming across the surveillance footage in the aftermath of her first botched attempt to access the control room and its transportation systems. She had had no way of knowing that that particular sequence of keystrokes would trigger the fire suppression systems, but there was no mistaking the results when the alarms blared and the so-called Batman appeared on Cress’s portscreen. He billowed out of room on a wave of flame retardant, a tall smudge of black against the fog of white powder that puffed out into the corridor. Cress had the feeling the flowing cape and dramatically pointy cowl were meant to make a terrifying impression. And they probably would have, had the man who wore them not been so thoroughly blasted with white that he resembled a powdered doughnut. She stifled a snort as he scowled through a cough, dislodging a fresh shower of powder from his face as he finally stalked off screen.

For a time, she’d thought that would be the last of him. Right up until he’d started trying to activate the station’s thermal imaging system. It had taken a breathlessly tense half hour of battling him for control of the system to stop him from pinpointing exactly where she sat with just a push of a button, and even once she had, all Batman had done was glare up at the nearest camera and stab a gloved finger at the lens.

“I know you’re here. And I’m going to find you,” he growled in a voice nearly as low as Wolf’s on a groggy morning. “One way or another.”

Cress frowned as she quelled the urge to curl into a ball and melt into the wiring. She didn’t necessarily have any quarrel with that man in particular, aside from accidentally being in a place he didn’t want her to be. But if Batman was going to be difficult…well. Cress could be difficult right back.

His personal security was good for a person of this era. Layers of firewalls and misdirects and virtual paper trails that led to nowhere kept her at bay for a while, but eventually, she sliced right to the heart of the matter. Bruce Wayne. Billionaire, orphan, scion of Gotham City (wherever that was), socialite, philanthropist, entrepreneur, quiet financial advocate for the Justice League and its endeavors, adoptive parent of an _unreal_ number of children, and—apparently—a big fan of bats. Cress frowned at the images that lit up her screen. They didn’t mesh with the snarling, glowering shadow that stalked the hallways beneath her. The onscreen Bruce stood tall on red carpets and posed in front of gleaming cars that even Cress could guess were expensive in this day and age. His bearing screamed money and ease and arrogance, but his smile was thin. There was a sharpness behind the eyes that didn’t quite fit. He wore it all like a Lunar with a favorite glamour, hiding behind a mask masquerading as truth.

From there, she poked into his more private communications for slightly more compelling evidence that there might be more to the man than a strikingly divided personality and an unsettling voice. There were chat logs archived in between the Watchtower’s tech support system and the private one tied to wherever Bruce’s own base of operations was, mostly tagged to someone called “Flash” who couldn’t seem to handle more than a log-in without dragging Bruce online to walk him patiently through it. There were texts fired off to someone called Tim—one of the collection of children, Cress assumes—in the wee hours of the morning that are almost entirely composed of creative parental threats of what will befall the unfortunate Tim if he doesn’t “go to bed in the next ten minutes or so help me, I _will_ tell Alfred.” Screenshots of articles about the Bludhaven police force’s successes carefully tucked away from a text thread with what appears to be another of the kids, pictures of rolling grain fields viewed from rustic front porch plucked from a chat thread with someone called Clark, a long vent about the woes of ambassadorial duties from a “Diana” saved in another conversation, crowded group photos with what looked like the full roster of Waynes smushing in to fit into the frame—it presented a vastly different view of the annoyance blocking Cress’s every attempt at getting home. Even the smile in those group shots was different. It was smaller—barely an upward twitch of the lips—but it made his face softer. Less stilted and stiff. And the messages, while terse, felt more human. If the names were changed, Cress could almost believe she was snooping through some of her _own_ saved messages, given how many complaints about diplomacy she fielded from Winter, Cinder, and Kai, and the sheer volume of group selfies Thorne insisted on taking ( _“Why waste such beautiful faces if we’ve got ‘em?”)_ whenever he could wheedle Cress, Scarlet, and Wolf into it on their travels. They weren’t so different, really…

But that didn’t mean Cress was going to let him win.

By the time she’d worked her way back to solely focusing on the Watchtower’s systems, she found that tab blocked by a tech support pop-up. Of all things…Cress squinted at the screen. Granted, she had been tucked away in her metal cave for hours now, but she hadn’t slipped _that_ much. It definitely hadn’t been there when she’d navigated away to rifle through Batman’s personal life, so he had clearly found a way to keep himself busy while she was otherwise occupied.

That wouldn’t do. Especially since she was far from done exploring the Watchtower’s computers.

After several attempts to clear the window long enough to regain her full access to the system, Cress found herself scowling. No amount of keysmashing or cursor-stabbing would budge it, and somehow, that didn’t surprise her. If the support logs she’d skimmed in her initial stroll through the satellite’s system were any indication, a solid half of the users who frequented the computer didn’t know a processor from a potato chip. It figured that whoever (Batman. It _had_ to be Batman.) had set up the tech support chat protocols had given them enough access to override anything those users happened to be doing. It was sensible, given the accidental mires a tech novice could wander into—Cress would know, given how much time she spent working out Thorne’s impressive technological tangles—but it was also wildly inconvenient. She tamped down a growl of frustration as she watched the message scroll across the screen. The screen that would stay locked out until she answered.

**_B: Identify yourself._ **

Sharp, succinct, and thoroughly bossy, all signed with an appropriately (in more ways than one) capital B. Of course. That man really was becoming a problem. Cress scowled harder as she settled on her own username. S for satellite. If he wanted to argue, she would make it clear that he might as well be bickering with the Watchtower itself. He really might as well be, for all the good it would do him.

**_S: No._ **

Her view of the system’s main interface blipped back to the forefront once she’d fired off her vaguely lazy reply—she needed to be _fast_ , not witty—but Batman’s rebuttal was almost immediate. All she gained were a few scants seconds to scan for anything that looked remotely like a ship or an escape pod or a—

**_B: You are not authorized to access this system. Identify yourself._ **

**_S: Just borrowing it. I’ll be out as soon as I can, thanks._ **

Cress sensed a sort of silent fuming from the other end of the connection as she worked. It must be difficult for him, she supposed. Knowing that his station—because it was technically _his_ station, if the financial records linked to the satellite’s construction were accurate—was compromised, but having no weapons outside of conversation to fight it with would’ve irked Cress, too. But, she decided with a faintly grim satisfaction, that was hardly her problem. There was a longer lag in between the messages before the next one left her screen frozen once more.

**_B: What is your purpose here?_ **

**_S: Nothing nefarious, I promise._ **

Cress volleyed back quickly. It was almost as good as the games she played aboard her own satellite once upon a time. There had been puzzles spinning in the background of her work, just engaging enough to keep herself challenged. Electronic solitaires and virtual chessboards to while away the hours she spent combing through dossiers and tracking down whatever Sybil asked for. This felt much the same as that once had. Spooling out inane small talk and bland non-answers to keep Batman out of her way wasn’t exactly what she would’ve chosen for distraction, but Cress supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was necessary. He was doing the same to her, she knew that for sure. While she was stringing him along to gain access to the machine, he was keeping the conversation going to keep her locked out of the system. They were deadlocked. Evenly matched. Cress wrinkled her nose at the screen. It wasn’t a sensation she was familiar with; she didn’t particularly care for it, either.

**_B: What are you attempting to do?_ **

There was a pause, barely a split second before another message filled the screen, then another and another after that. Cress gritted her teeth as each successive bit of text locked her keyboard. She wondered if this was his usual MO. If the legendary interrogation skills the internet of this world raved about were wholly due to his skill at badgering people to death or if really was something inherently more frightening about a man with pointy ears throwing himself at you from atop the nearest roof as opposed to any of the other, less theatrical vigilantes who operated here.

**_B: Who sent you?_ **

**_B: Identify yourself._ **

**_S: Back off, Bruce._ **

She sent the bombshell half in a fit of temper at being pestered and half with the hope that the moment of shock bound to follow such a revelation will buy her a few moments uninterrupted. It was a long shot. And an even bigger gamble, given what the man himself might do if he eventually did manage to get his hands on her, knowing that she knows what she does. Melodramatic costume aside, there was a disturbing hospital tally for his rogue’s gallery if the net was to be believed. That thought almost froze her fingers to the keys for the split-second she allowed herself to think about it. Being locked aboard the same space station did bring with it a certain likelihood for running into anyone locked into with you. It was bound to happen sometime, and Cress knew it. But she couldn’t afford to dwell on it. She pursed her lips and kept her fingers flying. There was a certain satisfaction in this one sliver of triumph, all the same. And since it was all she had aside from a growling stomach and gritty eyes, she would take it.

A long, long pause stretched moments into what felt like eons. Long enough for Cress to wrestle the support chat settings away from Batman’s carefully constructed trap. The settings that put a stranglehold on the Watchtower’s entire system were easy enough to bypass once she found them. Easier still when she had more than three consecutive seconds with which to attack them.

**_B: Who are you?_ **

The question was softer this time, guarded, but with the implied expectation that the face on this end of the line might be one that Bruce knew. Either that or a bigger threat than he’d imagined. If Cress hadn’t had his full attention before, she had the feeling that she certainly had it now. Like it or not. Still, she has what she had aimed for. The chat system can no longer hold her back. She minimized the window, shoved it to the fringes of her screen, and forged on to explore her escape options as efficiently as she could. Another message popped up in the corner of her screen nonetheless, persistent, even if it couldn’t monopolize the screen as it had before.

**_B: What do you want with the transportation system?_ **

So he could still monitor what she was up to. That was less than ideal, but not totally unmanageable. Cress ignored it in favor of pouring over her options. Her painfully limited options. There were no ships. No escape pods that activated without the station being severely damage. And the transporters…The transporters made her uneasy. She scanned the available information about the workings of the so-called “Zeta-Tubes” four times, then another two just for good measure. They were, apparently, Martian. And capable of de-atomization if you configured them wrong. Cress gulped. As tempting as it was to pounce on any chance to get to Earth— _any_ Earth, whether it was hers or not—the disintegration possibility made it significantly less attractive.

Cress slumped against the cold slab of conduit at her back, conscious of the fact that it sent a metallic thunk echoing through the walls, but too distracted to care. She couldn’t operate a machine with that sort of potential for disaster without any experience. Not safely, anyway. And since that appeared to be the only accessible route off the floating chunk of steel under her feet…that left her here. Alone in the dark with her final sparks of hope flickering out under the weight of a dismal sort of panic.

**_S: To go home._ **

Cress typed the last message slowly, mostly just to take in the comfort of looking at them herself. Home. It could be stressful and overwhelming and packed with the dizzying array of new people and places and experiences she waded through with each strip of tarmac the Rampion touched down on. But it was _hers_. And she missed it.

There was a long, aching pause before a reply blinked into existence.

**_B: Let me help._ **

Cress blinked. Of all the responses she could have gotten, she hadn’t anticipated that one. It was either a truce…or a trick. If what she had learned of the man so far held true, he was capable of either and equally prone to both.

They could keep playing cat and mouse, going round and round in their endless battle of wits and wills…or Cress could take the olive branch. If that was actually what this was. There was always going to be the chance that it was a ruse designed to draw her out long enough for him to bundle her off to a cell somewhere. But sooner or later, she would have to trust someone if she was ever going to make it home. And if she couldn’t trust Batman…who could she trust?

~

He was there when she finally nudged open the grate that walled off her hideaway from the corridor, lurking among the shadows of the junction between the galley and the hall. It would’ve been easier for him if he wasn’t coated in a fine white dusting of flame retardant powder. Most of it has been swept or beaten off, but stubborn particles still clung to the hem of his cape, the crevices of his utility belt, the broad sweep of his shoulders—short of running the whole collection through a shower, Cress doubted there would be any getting rid of the stuff. And, judging by the folded arms and the air of resignation radiating off the man, Bruce knew it, too.

For an instant, Cress froze, half-in and half-out of the mouth of the conduit. One shoe toppled off a foot left to hang in mid-air and clattered to the floor in a painful break to the hollow, awkward silence. It was different facing him this way as opposed to on the even playing field presented by a computer interface. Cress felt safer there than in the presence of a man who looked roughly like he could wrestle a full squadron of androids and win…but there was no use bemoaning that now.

She eased herself to the floor as gracefully as she could manage, then scrambled to scoop up the lost shoe. Batman took a stride forward, and Cress skittered two healthy strides back, brandishing the shoe like a pistol. It felt silly. Pointless, even, in the face of a literal superhero, but Scarlet had been so adamant about the value of radiating confidence and assertiveness even when you didn’t actually have any…It was worth a shot. Especially since Cress had no other ammunition with which to hold him off.

“I…uh…I come in peace?”

Batman’s eyes narrowed, the lenses of the cowl shrinking a hair with the movement, and he looked at her for a long appraising moment. Cress stared right back. Shoulders back, head up, jaw set. Just as Scarlet recommended for backing down surly dock workers and unpleasant reporters. The technique wasn’t exactly meant for stand-offs with vigilantes of legend, but…here they were. It held for a long moment before Cress’s stomach let out a traitorous growl—it was to be expected, really, seeing as how she’d last eaten eleven hours ago and a universe away—and she felt her fingers begin to tremble with the effort of brandishing her makeshift weapon.

“I have questions,” he said, finally. And for all that his voice rumbled like gravel through a garbage disposal when he was threatening a nameless threat amongst the insulation, it softened into something remarkably human when he held out a hand to gently lower Cress’s shoe until it was no longer brandished at him like a deadly weapon. “First…what is a Carswell Thorne?”

Cress choked on a half-hysterical giggle. That…was not what she’d been anticipating. Not even a little. But then, that had been the name she’d searched for the most. What she’d hoped to find the most.

“How do you know the name you mentioned?” _There_ it was. She knew she’d have to explain that sooner or later. “And finally—” He paused, and Cress saw a glimmer of the same gentleness she’d seen in those group photos. “How do you feel about cheeseburgers?”

~

The galley—or cafeteria, more accurately, given the sheer size and scale of the room that wrapped around the center of the station in a comfortable semi-circle—was cozier than Cress had expected. An immaculate kitchen stocked with prepped food filled a quarter of the space while the rest of it was split between sturdy, bolted-down tables and snug booths tucked against the broad viewport that ran the length of the wall.

The story of both her identity and her arrival trickled out in between bites of the dinner (cheeseburgers, true to his word) Bruce had put in front of her. He sipped slowly at what appeared to be a milkshake, though Cress had the feeling he would pass it off as a protein mix of some sort if she asked. She refrained, and he nodded dutifully though her tale as if it was no stranger than the average Wednesday. Perhaps it wasn’t here.

“It happens,” he said. “Incursions between universes are less uncommon than you’d think. I can run an analysis based on the coordinates you mentioned arriving at—we’ll see what turns up.”

“Thanks,” Cress murmured around a bite smeared with the perfect balance of mustard to pickle to patty. She breathed out a sigh, not quite on purpose. She felt a measure of the tension in her shoulders slough away with the last of her hunger. Nothing was truly fixed yet, and she knew she was far from out of the woods, but this was…better. No more dusty vents or cramping stomachs. No more hiding or high-stakes hacking. This was much more workable. Cress smiled tentatively as she pushed back in her chair. “This helped.”

The corners of the Batman’s lips twitched. It wasn’t a smile—Cress wasn’t sure he _could_ smile with a jaw that seemed to stay glued into that tense, stern line more often than not—but there was a glimmer of familiar warmth to it. She’d glimpsed similar expressions on Wolf and Jacin, more so in the early days than now, but it still happened. Little ghosts of happiness or mirth or approval buried under years of schooled features and dark days. For them, it was a work in progress—a slow, stumbling journey back to the realization that grinning at a friend’s touch or giggling over a bad joke was allowed. That it was safe.

The man in front of her seemed even less willing to let go of his shielding. But that was alright. Cress had gotten a fairly effective crash course in recognizing kindred spirits when she ran across them. Bruce Wayne was no exception.

“I’ve raised four teenagers so far,” He said as he came to his feet without so much as a scrape of his chair against the screechy metal floor. His not-smile crinkled into a slightly better impression of the real thing. “I learned a long time ago that there are few situations where food _isn’t_ a passable temporary solution.”

Cress chuckled. It was still an odd thought, envisioning a man who devoted so much of his time to…to _this_ as a father, but she supposed he’d had to learn the glower he’d given the camera after the fire alarm incident from somewhere.

“Come with me.” He tilted his head towards the door again and waited for her to collect her portscreen. He’d subtly eying it for the past half hour, clearly itching for more information about Cress’s world than what she’d offered. An advance look at the technology the future held had to be tempting. “We can get to work on finding your way home.”

Cress trotted to keep up as Batman swept back out into the corridor, but found that she couldn’t quite let the conversation go without one last question of her own.

“Bruce?”

“Stick to codenames.”

Cress tamped down a laugh at that. It had been one thing to read about a Batman, but calling someone that to their face still felt vaguely surreal. But so did everything else about today, so Cress supposed it was only fitting.

“Sorry— _Batman._ What made you offer to help in the first place? How did you…know?”

“The more I saw of you work, the less you looked like a threat. If you had wanted to do any real damage, you had more than ample opportunity.” His voice tipped into a grudging sort of respect. “And clearly more than ample skill.”

And with that, he picked up the pace to pull ahead in a whoosh of white-tinged cape. Cress grinned. She supposed that was as good as answer as she was likely to get. Or as close to a compliment.

~

Strolling through the Watchtower’s halls felt different when trailing in Bruce’s wake than it did alone. He walked softly for such a large person, but his presence seemed to fill the space anyway. Perhaps it was the cape. Idly, Cress wondered if he ever tripped on it. Cinder was forever groaning about the way Lunar fashions trended towards the flowing sleeves and the trailing capes, trains, and skirts that so often caught her heels or tangled about her ankles. And granted, Cinder was not an obsessively-trained vigilante, but if _anyone_ could stalk around with a tent’s worth of Kevlar composite draped off their shoulders and not occasionally fumble a step or two, Cress would be monumentally surprised.

The passing reminder of Cinder left a pang in Cress’s chest.

“Bru— _Batman._ ” How did anyone say that with a straight face on a daily basis? Cress wrinkled her nose and did her best to shove that musing to the backburner. “I wasn’t alone when I…left. I haven’t found any traces of the friends I was with since I arrived, but if whatever brought me here was as random as you mentioned…”

His brow furrowed a fraction as he paused long enough to punch the proper entrance codes into the hatch at which they had arrived.

“I haven’t received any reports that might indicate any other extradimensional guests. But you know that,” he added, with a pointed look at the portscreen Cress still cradled against her chest like a lifeline. Cress bit back a sly grin in favor of a faintly less smug one. Batman snorted at that as he turned to glide through the open hatch, Cress on his heels. She _did_ know that, given how many of his communications she’d gone through during her last peek. But that had been a solid hour ago.

“I can put out feelers. Make sure my contacts are aware that there may be a few…anomalies…on the way.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Cress murmured, her voice trailing off as she eased over the high threshold that separated this room from the corridor. Being inside the Watchtower’s system had been an experience, that much was true, but Cress was suddenly struck with the sensation that she had been viewing that system entirely the wrong way. The space sprawled out to cover the same square footage as the cafeteria twice over, every inch of it packed with something shiny and functional and—by the looks of it—tied into the central computer system that hummed through the massive console that dominated the lower half one wall. It was neat and tidy in a sterile sort of way—everything sectioned off according to purpose and efficiency of placement and gleaming with the sharp polish of a professional lab. Monitors and primitive holographic displays, banks of servers and processors, long tables stacked with scientific sensors and other equipment Cress couldn’t name, all powered and ready and thrumming with the soothing rhythm common to computers no matter the century. Cress sighed. Trying to take all that in through a port’s cramped screen had _worked_ , but it was a bit like trying to plot a shoreline through the wrong end of a telescope. But this. _This_ was the way to work. If there was a way to get home from this world, this would be place to find it. And if her friends had stumbled in the same way she had, this would be the way to track them.

Cress skimmed a hand over the cool surface of the nearest table and set her jaw. No. No “ifs” involved. There would be a way home if she had to punch another hole in the universe herself. If stomach wounds and Saharan treks weren’t enough to stop her, this wouldn’t be, either. She let her gaze wander through the room’s single viewport, past the muted blue reflection of the many screens and into the unyielding black of the space beyond it. Luna—or at least, where Luna should be, wasn’t visible from this angle. But Cress would find it. One way or another.

“These friends of yours…who should we be looking for?”

Cress opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again as she fished for the right words. Her friends weren’t easy to describe even under normal circumstances. She finally heaved a resigned sigh. But then, what were normal circumstances for them? Perhaps it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to contrive such a thing when clearly life just wasn’t meant to be that easy.

“A ship captain and two crewmembers, a queen, an emperor, an ambassador, and a royal guard.”

Batman lifted his head from whatever he had started typing into the nearest console to arch a brow at her.

“Interesting company you keep.”

Cress stifled a grin as she looked at the pointy ears, at the cape with its fine traces of flame retardant powder, and at the faint blue glow of the monitors reflected in the lenses of the literal bat-man’s mask. She considered pointing out the hints of “pot-meet-kettle” involved in him calling _anyone_ else interesting for any reason, but she supposed there was worse company to keep—or to eat cheeseburgers with—when stuck in a world that wasn’t hers. At least he could keep up.

Mostly.

“Yeah…so it seems.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, friends! I hope you enjoyed my flight of weirdness! There's more to come!


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